When you've only got a limited amount of time and money to spend in Las Vegas, you have to carefully choose which shows to go and see. So when I got to my room, the first thing I did was to check the previous week's entertainment guide considerately provided by the hotel (on Thursday they replaced it with the following edition, which by then was also out of date), and a look at the cover made me think "Ooh, Howie Mandel's in town! I'll have to go and see that!" Then it occurred to me that I only know Howie Mandel as a voice actor in Muppet Babies, and not even a very good one at that - he left after the first series, and his roles were taken over by much better actors (Skeeter by the great Frank Welker, Animal and Bunsen by Dave Coulier). I'd come across references to him here and there over the years, enough to gather that cartoon voice acting isn't his real vocation (he fell in my estimation when I realised that, obviously - if I got the chance to voice a cartoon, I'd forget any other career you might care to offer me) and that he's mainly a comedian of some kind. But I don't think I'd seen a picture of him before, and I'd certainly never heard his name spoken out loud - I found out when I saw an advert that it's Man-DELL, not rhymes-with-handle like I thought.
So I didn't go to see him. Maybe next time. I gather that Dave Coulier's also mainly a comedian, incidentally, but if he'd been on in Vegas I would certainly have checked him out. His voice acting in Muppet Babies was wonderful.
Howie Mandel was on St.Elsewhere for 6 years as the sexalicious Dr. Wayne Fiscus. He also had a talk show, a hidden camera show, a sitcom called Good Grief. He has been in a bunch of movies. He created Bobby's World and voiced Bobby and Howard. He created a bunch of kids' teaching CDs. He does hundreds of standup shows every year. He's done a mountain of stuff. For reals. Howie's an awesome creative guy.
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